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Apple, Zune web traffic surge on Christmas

updated 11:30 am EST, Fri December 28, 2007

by MacNN Staff

Apple and Zune Site Surge

Traffic to the websites for Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Zune has made major strides on Christmas day, according to new information published by stats tracker Hitwise. The Zune in particular saw major gains, with traffic nearly tripling at 299 percent compared to the Christmas before; the increase was also a 392 percent spike versus the 24th. Most of the visits are connected to downloading the necessary Zune software and to sign up for the Zune Social service that lets users share their music tastes online, Hitwise says.

The researchers have declined to publish the year-over-year gains for Apple but note that Apple's overall site traffic for Christmas is still several times that of Microsoft's, with 0.69 percent of all detected web traffic belonging to the iTunes site and just 0.09 percent attributed to official Zune pages. However, day-to-day traffic increased 339 percent for Apple versus Christmas Eve while the Apple Store itself climbed 169 percent. As with Microsoft's site, most of the jump between the 24th and 25th for the iTunes website is connected to new owners downloading copies of iTunes. Boosts to store traffic are unaccounted for but may relate to gift cards or late gifts.

The Zune increase shows that Microsoft has "captured interest" in its devices with this year's redesigned Zune lineup, Hitwise adds. The series includes both a revamped hard disk player (the Zune 80) as well as lower-cost Zune 4 and 8 flash-based models that have made the lineup more accessible to first-time or budget buyers. Apple's continued success with new iPod designs has also helped its results this year.

Apple was the only company producing a dedicated portable media player to be ranked in the top ten product-related searches, with the iPod and specific models appearing three times while most of the searches are dominated by consoles such as Nintendo's Wii or Sony's PSP.

overtaking Apple this season? Let's see. Apple is likely to sell 25 million iPods this quarter and the Zune is likely to sell, if lucky, 1 million. So I guess there's no reason to worry yet (or ever). Whew!

If 4 people moved to a deserted island the population would have increased by 400%. Big deal, just wait till the first Zune viruses arrear....and when the poor fools try to actually share music on that thing.

I don't like to be the one to break this to y'all. But the Mac market-share in comparison to Windows is probably worse than the Zune's in comparison to the iPod. So I don't really understand what all that confidence and arrogance is about!

When we read an article on how Apple has gained 50% market-share we make a big-deal out of it, but when MS makes 100% market growth we make fun of it. I wouldn't belittle this, it might be a big deal.

Personally, I would like to see the zune and other players to start to gain more market share so apple would be pushed to make better and cooler products.
Strong rivalry can only bring better products.

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